South Korea’s Armadillo-T car folds itself up for easy parking

It may look like a cheap toy car to some, but the “Armadillo-T” from South Korea has a handy little trick up its sleeve: The experimental electric car can fold itself up when commanded to via smartphone. The idea is to free up space in extremely crowded cities and is part of a trend to develop more environment-friendly vehicles for urbanized areas.

The sides of the Armadillo have also been trimmed down — instead of the usual rear-view mirrors, it uses tiny little cameras that can show what’s behind or beside the car. It also has a Windows-powered computer that enables it to park itself. On a 10-minute charge, the Armadillo can travel up to 62 miles at maximum speed of 37 miles per hour.

Unfortunately for those that might fancy this strange vehicle, it can’t legally be driven in South Korea due to it not meeting some criteria such as withstanding crashes. It probably won’t ever make it to the market either. But while we probably won’t see Armadillo-T’s being driven around, the concepts and technology behind it could very well make it to our cars of the future.

For a quick look at the car in folding action, check out the video below:

Enrique Manalang

[@Bruce Fraser] I was wondering the same thing! I don’t think it would be useful in a sense that you could fit more cars closer together in shared space — but more of being able to use smaller spaces as individual parking spaces since they fold up and won’t block the path.